Cloud computing is already being used by consumers and businesses
with services like Google Apps and Google Voice. Many are hesitant to
put their information on cloud systems outside of their control, but
Google still sees cloud computing as the future and has big plans for
the concept.

A Google executive has said that the search giant
has only
scratched the surface of what it plans to do with cloud-based
offerings like Google Voice according to eWeek. Google Voice
currently has over 1.4 million users, but is still a far cry from
Skype's 500 million users. The big difference between Skype and
Google Voice (GV) is that GV users need phone service and Skype users
don't.

That major difference will eventually go away though;
in 2010 Google plans to add VoIP service to Google Voice. The new
VoIP service will allow GV users to place calls via the internet to
other PCs and to landline and mobile phones. The capability will come
to GV courtesy of the purchase of soft phone maker Gizmo5 in
November.

Google won’t get specific on what it plans to do
with Gizmo5 integration, but Google's Bradley Horowitz told eWeek,
"What we're trying to do with telephony is give people a
seamless experience that frees up their telephony communication from
the silos where it's lived for the last decade. Voicemail, my
contacts, all of those things have been segregated from the rest of
my Web experience. We have big plans to do a better job."

Google
sees GV being highly integrated with voice mail transcription, inbox
integration, and threaded SMS along with lots more across all of a
user's phones and contact sources. The experience will be optimized
for functionality on any device form a computer with a large screen
to a connected wristwatch.

Horowitz also talked about
Google's cloud computing plans for 2010 saying, "We want to
build the cloud in such a way that it's got all of the qualities you
would want. You want it to be blazingly fast. You want it to be
accessible wherever you are on the planet within milliseconds. You
want it to be accessible on whatever device you happen to be at,
whether that's an enormous big-screen monitor, or whether something
the size of a wristwatch. You want it to be transparent and flow
across services and devices without you having to think about or
program it."

There have been notable incidents this year
that have undermined the appeal of cloud computing in many minds.
Most notable the fiasco with lost
data for Sidekick customers. Ultimately, most of the user data
was returned, but not before the image of cloud, computing was
tarnished.